


every grieving lover

by bazanite



Series: a city for kings [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: BPD Kent Parson, Demi Kent Parson, Demisexuality, Gratuitous Swearing, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Parent Death, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Child Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, sometimes they play hockey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-17 07:03:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12360168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazanite/pseuds/bazanite
Summary: Kent's mom dies in June, or, a derailment in three parts.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Kent Parson is canonically weepy @ me for a fight. 
> 
> This is finished! It'll be released in installments over the next three days, so if you want to wait to read the whole shebang in one go you can add it to your marked for later list or subscription list and rest assured that it'll all be posted soon. 
> 
> Also it should be known that this story could bring up some seriously unwanted feelings if you're struggling with mental health. There's a pretty solid chunk of time where a character contemplates suicide (but does not make an attempt). It's not light shit. I cried while writing it. Please please please take care of yourself and skip this one if that sounds like something that might hijack your emotional response. I promise I'll still love you.

Kent's mom dies in June.

"She always has the worst fucking timing," Kent says when he hangs up, throwing his phone onto the kitchen island with a little too much force. "Had, I guess. What a fucking bitch."

"Dude," Jeff says, low and shocked. He's hanging over the back of Kent's couch, still holding the obscenely large bowl of popcorn they made. Behind him, Emma Stone and Dan Byrd are frozen mid fake-coitus in glorious 4K Ultra HD. 

Kent goes out to the patio and leans against the railing and puts his hands in his head and tries to breathe. But it's 10 pm in Las Vegas in early June which means it's already about a thousand degrees and Ken't can't suck down a satisfying breath. His lungs ache. He can't  _ fucking breathe, _ if he could just stop shaking maybe--

"Hey, hey, shit," Jeff says from the open doorway and Kent realizes dimly that he's slid to the ground and is leaning against the iron railing. "It's okay, just breathe--"

Kent wants to yell at him:  _ that's what I'm trying to fucking do. _

"Have you ever had a panic attack before?" Jeff asks, hustling over to him, and Kent wants to laugh in his face but his entire body hurts too much. His fingers are all curled up into his palms and he hyper-focuses on trying to relax them before he remembers.  _ It's temporary, sweetheart, _ Alicia used to tell her son.  _ It'll pass. It can't hurt you. It'll pass.  _ Probably not the best advice in retrospect, because the world is complex and awful and it'll find a way to screw you in the end. In the moment, though... in the moment, Jack had said it helped. 

Kent forces himself to lay back on the poured concrete of his patio. Jeff slips a hand under his head, helps him down, makes sure he doesn't brain himself on the railing or something. He doesn't freak out, which Kent deeply appreciates, just sits there with him while Kent shakes and tries to unclench his jaw. 

Jeff doesn't offer him awful platitudes, just starts counting out loud, nice and slow, and before long Kent realizes his breathing's synced up to the rhythm of it. God bless Jeffrey Troy. 

"You need me to call Pru?" Jeff asks, once Kent's breathing has slowed and all of his extremities feel like they've been electrocuted and weak. Kent shakes his head. It's late, and he doesn't want to wake her. Besides, he's not... freaking out. It came totally out of nowhere. His sympathetic nervous system just seized up and hijacked his body, it has nothing to do with how he's actually feeling. Pru's been talking to him a lot about this lately, how his body and his emotions and his brain have totally separate reactions, and that's okay. He's just gotta pay attention to the right reaction.

"I'm going to get you some water," Jeff says, rocking to his feet. "Don't go anywhere."

Kent waves an exhausted arm at him and lies there, looking at the sky. He wishes he could see the stars, which is kind of weird. He's never lived anywhere without an obscene amount of light pollution. He wonders what Montana is like.

"Hey, did you know you have bendy straws?" Jeff asks when he comes back out to the patio. 

"They were fifty cents at the dollar store," Kent says weakly, and tries to sit up. That's a real bad idea though, so he just wiggles over onto his side and takes the glass from Jeff so he can drink. "Sue me."

Jeff snorts and holds the glass carefully in front of Kent's face so he can access the straw without dumping the glass down his shirt. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah, I think." All of the muscles across Kent's shoulders ache. He's going to be sore as fuck for their next game. Great. 

Jeff waits until Kent's drained the water before leaning back on his heels and setting the glass up on the table by Kent's head. "You ever have a panic attack before?"

Kent makes a low-pitched grumbling noise. "Not really. I'm, uh. Familiar with the concept though. Jack used to get them a lot." 

They've talked about it, a little. About Jack's overdose. About the fallout. Jeff was really fucking persistent about getting Kent to communicate with him last year, so it couldn't be helped. Most of Kent's trauma shared an epicenter so to speak, so it had a tendency to come up. 

Jeff turns around so he can sit down next to Kent's head, just close enough that Kent can feel his hair brush against Jeff's jeans. Jeff's picked the perfect level of hover for the situation; he's not too close, and not too far away. Kent scrubs a hand over his face. "Guess what the last thing she said to me was."

Jeff cringes so hard Kent feels it through the top of his head. "I'm sure it was characteristically awful."

"She said, 'Kenny,  _ mijo, _ baby. Paid for that school in Canada. Seeded your career. What's a few grand to pay your mama back for a lifetime investment?"

Jeff sighs explosively. 

"They're planning the funeral for Sunday." Kent finally lifts himself up and it's way more difficult than it should be in any other situation. Jeff immediately moves in closer so their arms are pressed together. "Next Sunday, Jeff." 

"Uh," Jeff says. He doesn't have to say it. They've been doing so well. Kent can practically taste the fucking Cup on his lips--they tied up the playoffs last night and Kent is  _ dizzy _ with how close he is. Game six is on Sunday. Game six--the first possible last game of the playoffs, the first night the Cup is actually in the building, the first night Kent gets to breathe the same filtered and recycled air as the Cup in five years--is on  _ Sunday. _

It's funny. Kent never really expects his mom to hurt him, and here she is doing it all over again in death. 

Kent feels like he's going to puke. He puts a hand over his face to keep it all in and lets his head drop to Jeff's shoulder. It doesn't even seem like Jeff thinks about it before he shifts to wrap an arm around Kent and. That's another thing Kent's been thinking too much about, lately. Jeff smells really good. Like citrus and wood. Warm. 

"What the fuck am I gonna do," he mumbles into Jeff's shirt. "I don't want to go to New York. I don't want to go to her fucking funeral. I wanna stay in Vegas and destroy the Falcs and never let them claw their way out of the desert again. But if I don't, if somebody gets ahold of it and learns I didn't go--can you imagine the media response? Jesus." He hunkers down in himself, like maybe if he makes his body small enough he'll blink right out of existence and the problem won't be a problem anymore. He's such a shitty child. It's no wonder she never wanted him. Just like everyone else. 

Jeff grips the back of his neck and Kent sighs. He's gotten into this habit of touching Kent, like, all the time, and it's deeply distracting. Sometimes it's so good it makes Kent want to cry. 

"You don't have to figure it out tonight," Jeff says. "Where's your thing, your book. What's it say? Distract yourself until you can make a rational choice instead of emotional one?" 

Kent's DBT workbook is probably by his bed. He tends to overthink things when he's trying to sleep, so he's taken to keeping it on the nightstand so he can roll over and read through it instead of fixating. It helps, sometimes. Some nights he wants to throw it out a window. 

Jeff pulls away from Kent, presumably to stand up and get the book, but Kent shakes his head kind of swipes at  Jeff's shirt. He clings. He's not proud. Jeff takes the hint and settles back down, sighing. When Kent touches his knee, Jeff's jeans are cold.

"Hey," he says suddenly, startled. "Where's your ice pack? Go get it. If the trainers knew I was letting you get away with this they'd mount me on a post outside of the stadium." 

Jeff huffs out a laugh and tries to stand again. This time, Kent lets him go. 

"You wanna go back inside?" Jeff asks when he's upright. Kent rubs at his face and nods and lets Jeff haul him to his feet. Inside, the movie's still paused, and Jeff's popcorn has been abandoned on the kitchen counter. He goes to swap his ice pack out for a frozen one, then settles back down on the couch. Kent sits next to him, precarious and jittery. His insides are all strung out and shivery and he can't stay upright anymore, so he lays down and curls up on his side, his head next to Jeff's knee. 

"I think the mood has kind of been ruined for Easy A," Kent says, genuinely disappointed. It's one of his favorite movies. Jeff hums his agreement, and fiddles with the DVR while Kent rests his eyes. The room goes dark suddenly, and Jeff's hand falls to rest on Kent's hair. The opening theme for Planet Earth washes over the still living room. 

"Hey," Jeff says, suddenly. "Did you do it?" Kent makes a tired, inquisitive sound. "Did you send her the money?"

She'd bought a Macbook. 

"Yeah, 'course. What else was I doing with it?"

Jeff's hand moves over his hair, thumb scratching lightly behind Kent's ear. It sooths him in a way Kent valiantly tries to fight against. 

"Go to sleep if you need to," Jeff says. "I'll wake you up when it's time for bed." 

Kent twists and adjusts so his face is pressed into Jeff's hip. He thinks about his mother, just for a second, before Jeff's heavy hand moves across his scalp in a warming pattern, and Kent lets Sir David Attenborough wash over him. 

. . . 

Despite his best intentions, Kent is not an idiot. When he wakes up in the morning, he rolls out of bed, gets himself a bowl of raisin bran, and calls his fucking therapist. 

"My mom died," he says when she picks up, no preamble, no nonsense. It's the best thing about their relationship. 

"Okay," Pru says slowly. "Okay. Sorry for the cliche therapist question in advance, but how are you feeling about that?"

Kent has no fucking idea. "Confused, mostly. I… This is so selfish, but I'm pissed. I'm so angry. They're going to have her funeral on the same day as game six, and I know that's not her fault, that's my cousins', and I know I'm being an asshole thinking that her death isn't as important as, you know, my  _ career, _ but I'm still pissed at her about it. Out of the fucking millions of Mexicans in New York, I get the Protestant ones who don't give a shit about a speedy burial." He rakes a frustrated hand through his hair and laughs, bitter.

"And I think I'm sad, too, but that's kind of on a backburner. Mostly I'm… relieved. God. No, mostly I'm upset with myself for feeling relieved. And my stupid brain decided it would be a great time to have a dream about Zimms. Like, dead mom? Fix it with a dream about your teenage love affair! It wasn't even a sexy dream, you know? Just… we were just standing around in his parent's kitchen. It was so boring. On what fucking planet does that make sense?" Suddenly he's not hungry anymore, and he puts the bowl of cereal on his coffee table a little too roughly. "Sorry. That is… a lot. Wow. Okay. Can you talk now, please?"

Pru hmms, contemplatively. 

"Listen, Kent. Your mother neglected and abused you. The second you got away from her, you fixated on the one person who showed you the exact kind of adoration Borderline feeds off of. I know you're feeling a lot of confusing stuff right now. Losing a parent is hard enough for most people, but losing an emotional abuser is..." Pru laughs, small and humorless. "It'll throw anyone into a tailspin. It makes sense that your subconscious would hijack everything to go back to a time where you felt safe and loved when you're threatened by instability." 

"I don't feel unstable, though," Kent says, sad. "Just confused."

"You must go to therapy or something," Pru says, and Kent chokes out a laugh. 

"What do I do, though? Do I go to the funeral? Or do I stay in Vegas and win the Stanley Cup?"

"Well," Pru says, slow and contemplative. "There's no guarantee that you'll even win it on Sunday, right? You've still got another game to go to tie up."

"I  _ knew _ you understood hockey," Kent says, vindicated. "We're your favorite team, right?"

"Focus, please," Pru says, not unkindly. "What do you want to do? You, Kent. Not Hockey Kent Parson, not Silvie's son Kent Parson. Your first instinct. " 

"I want to win the Stanley Cup," he says instantly. "I don't want to go to New York. I want to stay here."

"And what do you think you  _ should _ do?" 

Kent scrubs a hand through his hair and pulls on it a little anxiously. "I think I should go be the respectful son or whatever and bury my mom." 

Now that he's said it out loud:  _ bury my mom, _ a strange sort of grief washes over him. It's little, like he expected, like when he finishes a sad movie or hears about kids in India dying from cancer. He cried more about his neighbor's dog dying when he was nine years old than he has about his own mother. 

"Okay," Pru says, slowly. "When you started therapy, I had to write down your goals, right. Do remember what they were?"

Kent definitely remembers. "Learn how to treat other people better." 

"Right. Okay, go with me on this one, but let's do a thought exercise." Kent groans. "Yeah, I know. Imagine the person you want to be. Your ideal you, okay? Now imagine that there's two ideal Kent Parsons. One of them is the you in New York, waiting to bury his mom. The other one is the you in Vegas, waiting to win the Stanley Cup. You can only show up for one of those ideal versions of yourself. Which one would you feel worse letting down?" 

"Fuck," Kent says. He kind of hates therapy. She makes him examine uncomfortable shit. "I've won the Cup before. It was my dream, and… I did it. I did it my first fucking year."

"Yeah," Pru says, fond. She's not supposed to let her own desires cloud Kent's judgement--she told him that on the first day of therapy--but it's hard not to feel good when Kent makes a choice she's obviously proud about. "Look, in the end it doesn't matter what I think; you've got to plot your own course and follow that path. But from where I'm sitting you've got years of your career in front of you. You'll be here again. You won't have the opportunity to put your mother to rest a second time."

Kent turns his face into the couch cushion and doesn't scream. 

"I hate it when you're right," he says, muffled. 

"You must be pissed off  _ all the time," _ Pru says, and Kent laughs. 

. . .

They play on their own ice the next night for game five and Kent is fucking  _ on  _ the entire night. Having Rummy and Weasel on his line never fails to amaze Kent. He and Rummy have been tight for years--they play beautiful fucking hockey together--but the addition of Weasel this year makes Kent want to sing. He loves the kid; he's completely certain that he was the driving force in getting them to the playoffs. Kent loves him so much he might propose over the Cup when they win it. 

But.

Fucking. Krasnow. 

Kent's not too proud to admit it; the guy is the best goalie the Falconers have had in the history of the franchise. Everything Kent lays into him he knocks away; top shelf, five hole, a sexy little backhand wrister that Kent's particularly proud of that  _ just barely  _ gets deflected. At one point Kent sends him one from down the ice and the guy no shit reaches up grabs it out of the fucking air.

He's so fucking good. Kent  _ hates  _ him. 

The Falconers win 1-0 and Kent skates off the ice bitter and snarling. He yanks his helmet off and it ricochets off the back of his stall when he slams it in. The rest of his gear comes off in a similar manner.

"Parser," Jeff eventually says, low and warning. "You're scaring the children." 

"Fuck the children." Kent hasn't said anything since he's come off the ice; there's a media scrum waiting for him but he's so angry he's liable to break something or someone. He's definitely going to look back on this moment and hate himself. It's not very captainly of him. But he can't fucking help it. He wants to go back onto the ice and murder someone. 

"Equipment room," Jeff says, and shoves Kent towards the door. "Now." 

Kent opens his mouth to protest, but Jeff pushes him again, and Kent stumbles out of the dressing room and across the hall. Jeff slaps the lights off when they get in, and crowds him over to the corner. "Close your eyes," he snaps, and Kent wants to punch him, brawl right here in this glorified fucking closet but Jeff reaches up and puts his hands over Kent's ears and-- "C'mon, seriously. You need to calm the fuck down."

Kent growls and shakes his fists and closes his eyes despite himself. 

"There you go," Jeff says. "Breathe in through your nose." He starts counting, slow and steady, and Kent matches the pattern. In. Out. With Jeff's hands on his ears and his eyes closed, Kent finds a little focus. 

"Fuck," he finally says, slumping forward against Jeff's chest. "At least I fixated on their fucking goalie instead of Zimms this time." Kent sighs.

"Hey, yeah, that's something." Jeff doesn't sound impressed, and he looks more than a little dubious. "You okay to go back in there and give your very best pep talk? Let your beautiful goaltender know that he did a hot-shit job and you worship the ground he walks on?"

Kent grumbles. He wants to say no; he wants to hide in the equipment room with Jeff forever. But he has a job to do, and despite appearances he's actually pretty good at it. 

"At least this way you can't win the Cup on Sunday without me," he says when he pulls back. 

"Might lose it without you," Jeff says, looking calm, but something about it makes Kent feel unbearably sad.

"Nah," Kent says. He reaches up and pushes a sweaty lock of Jeff's hair out of his eyes. "You're amazing, no way. You're gonna kill it without me."

The sadness in Jeff's eyes warps and shifts into something resembling fondness, and it startles Kent. So he does what he always does when confronted with unexpected emotions: he tucks his tail and runs. He goes out to his sweaty, exhausted boys and cries with them. He goes out to the media scrum and tells the world why he won't be playing on Sunday.

He runs away, and he doesn't think about it at all.

. . .

Kent takes a plane into LaGuardia Saturday night and stumbles from the terminal to his Uber to a nondescript hotel without breathing, it feels like. The driver and the desk clerk don't recognize him and Kent says a small, exhausted prayer to whatever God that's looking out for him. 

He wakes up in the morning with a splitting headache and a big ball of something resembling irritation sitting right behind his esophagus. 

"Here we go," he says to his dead-eyed reflection in the bathroom mirror while he's putting on his cufflinks. 

. . .

The funeral is… fine. 

Kent mostly tunes it out, even the part where he gets up and talks about Silvie. He says something about her compassion and the strength of her spirit, or whatever, then sits back down and listens to her brother share a fond memory from when they were growing up. 

Overall Kent reckons it's the kind of funeral wholly average people get. He looks around and wonders what all of these people actually thought about her. What they would have said a month ago.

The funeral ends with a hymn and Kent tells himself not to shoot to his feet. He stands slowly, after his uncle does, and lingers awkwardly as people come over to talk to Luis. She died of a brain clot so they've got her set up at the front in an open casket but Kent categorically refuses to go up there and look at her. As it is, he's doing okay and he's fairly sure he'd be pretty seriously not okay if he had to look at his mom's waxy frozen face. 

Overall, the whole experience passes in a sort of blur. He's not even sure what he says when people come over to offer their sympathies. It'll freak him out, later, but right now he's thankful for whatever weird dissociative state he's slipped into.

When he looks up towards the door, Jeff's mom is getting up from a pew in the back, looking around. She's stunning, small and pale and so regal, and suddenly Kent is closer to tears than he has been all day. He's only met her a few times--once last summer at her birthday party, twice when she came to visit Jeff and stayed for games, cheering furiously in Jeff's actual sweater, about six sizes too big. He's only met her a few times but she treats Kent like he's her own. Kent kind of wonders what Jeff's told her about him, but in the end it doesn't matter.

He's never really known anybody to want him in the easy way that Catherine Troy does; she bosses him around like she's not afraid he'll break. He kind of loves her for it in a way he'll never be able to explain. 

"Hi, baby," she says when she comes nearer. Jeff's youngest sister Sophie is at her elbow, and they hug him in quick, tight succession. 

"Dad sends his condolences," Sophie says when she lets go. "He would have come but he's on a sales trip in Madison right now."

"That's alright." Kent still feels a little numb. "Thank you for coming. You really didn't have to, though. I'm just going to fly back to Vegas as soon as it's over."

"Oh, shut up." Sophie puts a steadying hand on his elbow. "Don't be stupid. Of course we're gonna come. I can't believe you didn't even tell us. Jeff called us in a tizzy last week because he couldn't come with you and didn't want you to be alone." 

Kent experiences a wash of shame and looks at his feet.

"Wow," Catherine says, distantly. "Your mother was so beautiful, hon."

Kent turns to take in whatever Catherine's looking at, and it's the blown-up photo of his mother that Kent keeps in his wallet. Silvie was always stunning, even edging into her sixties, but in this picture, leaning back on her elbows on a fence on the promenade, she's radiant. God, she's probably the same age in the photo as Kent is now. Her skin's all sun-kissed and honey-colored and her dark hair is pulled up and pinned in a red bandana and she looks happy, at ease. 

Fuck, he misses her. He misses the in-between moments of her, when she'd hold his hand while they walked through the park and ask him questions about school, the mother who'd stand at the stove and saute him a big pile of garlic shrimp in the summer. They're warm memories in between the shitty ones, the ones where she'd laugh at him when she made him cry, the ones where she refused to take responsibility for the hurt she caused. 

"Yeah," he says, quiet. He tries to blink back tears but is wholly unsuccessful. 

"Oh, sweetheart," Jeff's mom says, from much closer, and suddenly Kent's being wrapped up tight in her arms. He tenses up, but Catherine locks her arms around his back and he hides his face in her shoulder and shakes. She smells like lavender, and it's almost soothing.

"I don't want to do this," he says, pitifully. Catherine puts her hands on his arms and regards him for a few seconds before shaking him gently, which, what is it with the Troy family and shaking him? "I'm so tired. I just want to be done with this." 

"It doesn't matter what you want," she says, pinched Jersey accent sharper than Kent's ever heard it. "You're going to walk out of this church and get in that car and go to the graveside and sit through the burial, and you're going to do it for the idea of your mother. For the part of her that actually cared for you you. And then it'll be over, baby." Catherine lifts a hand and wipes the tears off of his cheeks and Kent wants to drive as far away as he can as fast as he can. "You've come so far, you can't run away now." 

He wonders if she has any idea how close to home she's hitting.

. . .

They don't go with him to the graveside. It's a family-only thing, and as much Kent wants to shout and rave about the ironic injustice of that, his uncle gives him a single stern look and he caves. 

It's kind of funny, Kent thinks. After today he's not going to have any reason to speak to Luis ever again. 

"We'll follow you to the site." Catherine kisses him on the cheek and grips his elbow tightly to show she means business. "Send your driver back when you get there and come home with us. Don't go back to Vegas tonight. Spend the night. Let us feed you."

Kent sighs. "Honestly, I'm just going to go to the airport and pick up a flight when I leave. It's not a big deal."

"If you think I'm going to let you be alone after your mother's funeral you're out of your damn mind," Catherine snaps. Kent's honestly a little taken aback, and Sophie gives him a mean look over her mother's shoulder. God, this family. He's really starting to understand why Jeff is the way he is. Resilient.

Kent waffles. He really wants to go home and get in his own bed and maybe cry a little, but Catherine's hand on his arm is warm and solid and he kind of thinks it might be better if he has someone around when he watches the game. If he watches the racap alone and they lose, he's liable to do something stupid. 

If they win--which they're going to, Kent has zero doubt--it'd be nice to celebrate with Jeff's family. 

"Alright, okay, I forfeit," he says. "I'd like that."

Catherine nods, just once, like she was just waiting for Kent to give up the fight. "We'll come after the procession, and wait by the entrance."  

All of the hurt and exhaustion just collapses in on Kent, and he hangs his head."Yes ma'am."

Across the cathedral, Luis watches Kent with the Troys, and he looks less than pleased.

Kent couldn't care less.

. . .

At the graveside, watching them lower his mother into the earth, Kent feels nothing. 

He feels nothing deep, deep down, in a place he used to think was called loneliness. 

. . .

The game starts half an hour after they get home from the funeral. 

"Baby, go put clean sheets on your brother's bed," Catherine tells Sophie. "And take Kent's bag up there with you."

"What the fuck, he's got legs," Sophie protests, and Catherine swats her sharply on the arm.

"Language, Sophie. Kent is our guest."

"I'm thirty three fucking years old," she hisses at Kent when she passes him. "I should never have moved back in after grad school. I'm going to be trapped here forever." 

"She didn't have to do that," Kent says when she's gone, uncomfortable. He's still standing in the doorway, shifting his weight from foot to foot. 

"Yes, but she did it anyway." Catherine puts her bag down on the coffee table by the door. "Now be a dear and go make us some popcorn while Sophie gets your room sorted, then you can go up and change and we can put on the game." 

Kent goes into the kitchen and pokes around in the pantry. He's expecting the microwaveable kind of popcorn but all he can unearth is a little plastic jug full of kernels.

"Uh, Mrs. Troy?" he calls. "I don't know how to make this kind." 

She comes into the kitchen and very politely does not laugh at him, even though she kind of looks like she wants to. 

"Alright, I'll show you how. You want a beer, hon?" Catherine asks, opening the fridge. 

Kent lets himself think about it and is startlingly pleased to discover that he doesn't. He hasn't had a coca cola in a million years though, and if the army of nutritionists and trainers the Aces paid knew what Kent was thinking they'd all start screaming in tandem. "I'm good, thanks. Can I have one of those pops, though?" 

Catherine hands him one without remark, and opens her own beer with the bottle opener on the side of the fridge. "Alright. Get that big pot down from the rack--that's the one--and put it on the stove and I'll show you how to make popcorn like God intended."

"Yes ma'am," Kent says, and is almost surprised to feel himself settle.


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey," Kent says, quiet and sad, when Jeff calls him around midnight. The line is basically silent for a time while they listen to each other breathe. "How's your hand?" Kent eventually says and pretends like he doesn't hear Jeff clearing the thickness from his throat.

"It'll be fine. They splinted it up for now. It's just a little fracture."

Kent grunts in acknowledgement, and they listen to each other's silence again for a while. Kent really, really wants to talk about it. He's over the part where he wants to yell and break things (which, hey, added bonus of staying with the Troys: even Kent's not enough of a scumbag to wreck other people's shit in a rage). Mostly he wants to tell Jeff sorry, more than anything. Sorry that he wasn't there, sorry that he couldn't take them to victory again, sorry that Jeff had to lose the cup to Kent's ex-... whatever. Losing happens. Hell, it happens every year (except that one time it didn't) and it sucks just as much as last time.

He feels helpless. For fuck's sake, he buried his mom today. Didn't the universe kind of owe him one?

"I'm sorry," Jeff finally says, and Kent sighs.

"Yeah. Me too."

Jeff clears his throat again, and just like that they're not talking about the loss anymore. "I heard you've been shacking up with my mom and sister. I'm gonna fly up there so I can protect their virtue."

"Jeff says he needs to protect your virtue," he tells Sophie. They're sitting in the living room in somber silence with coffee and thin slices of cheesecake. Kent's pretty sure it's a bribe to keep him from crying about the Cup, but he's okay with it. It's really damn good cheesecake.  "Yours and your mom's."

She gives him the most incredulous look Kent's ever seen on a human before. "Our mother had six kids. I lost my virginity before Jeff. Slept with way more girls, too. Hotter girls. Tell him to fuck right off with that masculine protector shit."

"Sophie protests," Kent tells Jeff while Catherine cackles. "Explicitly."

"Hey, it's my job to protect her from men like you," Jeff says, even though they both know Kent's about the least sexually predatory person on the face of the planet.

"Hey, speaking of, when'd you lose your virginity?" Kent interrupts, unabashedly curious. "Were you an awkward teenager, Jeffrey? Did your big sister have to teach you about the birds and the bees?"

"Holy shit shut up," Jeff half-yells into the phone, but he's laughing too. It feels like the loss is a hundred years ago. "It doesn't matter, I've already booked my flight. I'd come up tonight but I'm so fucking exhausted I can't see straight. I'll be up there by ten or eleven tomorrow. Don't go anywhere, asshole. You gotta wait for me now."

"Ugh, fine," Kent says, "but only because you call me such nice names."

. . .

"We're having beans for dinner," Sophie says when she comes in the next morning to find Kent sitting in the kitchen, playing sudoku on his phone. She drops a plastic bag full of beans on the placemat in front of him and puts a big colander down next to his right hand. "Shuck."

Kent opens the bag, looks at the beans, looks at the colander.

"Uh?" he says, completely lost. "Don't you shuck corn?"

Sophie turns around from where she's rinsing potatoes at the sink. "Holy shit, you _are_ useless. What the hell do they teach you at hockey school?" Kent laughs, and she dries her hands and leans over his shoulder to show him how to snap the ends off of the beans. "See? Easy."

Kent nods and copies her. It actually is pretty easy, and he picks up a pretty steady pace while Sophie peels and chops the potatoes. They work together in companionable silence, and Kent realizes he feels oddly at home here.

"I don't think I said this before but I'm glad you and your mom came to the funeral. You didn't have to, but it was. It was really nice having you there. I'm really glad Jeff called you," he admits.

Sophie lifts a shoulder. "My brother's a good guy."

"Yeah he is," Kent says. He shakes the bag of beans to find the unsnapped ones. "I don't know if you know this, but he helped me out a lot last year. Basically picked my ass up and threw me in therapy. He's... I'm really glad he's in my life."

When he looks up, Sophie's turned around and is regarding him with focused intent.

"Jesus," Kent says, startled. "You look exactly like him when you do that. I'm starting to think he got more than just how to skate from you," he says, laughing.

Sophie stares for a moment longer, then huffs out her own laugh, breaking the tension of the moment. " _Please,"_ she says, pressing her hand to her chest with mock offense. "He'd be nowhere without me. I mean, honestly. I taught him everything he knows." She mimes a couple jabs, her implication perfectly clear.

"Yeah?" Kent laughs. "You beat him up a lot as a kid?"

Sophie snorts, then she grows quiet. "Kent," she finally says, and turns back around to the potatoes. "My brother's not a stupid guy. You know that, right?"

"What?" Kent asks, startled. "Yeah of course I know that, I play with him. We… honestly spend probably way too much time together. I know him, he's not dumb."

Sophie nods slowly, the sharp rhythm of her knife steady and focused. "I just. I know a lot of people think he's kind of slow about stuff--" She knocks her free hand against her head like it might echo-- "One too many fights or something. But he's really clever. He's scary good with people. But he's." She sighs and looks away, waves the knife absently. "Self-sacrificing to a fault sometimes. It'd be really easy for the right person to take advantage of that."

Kent squints at her. If he didn't know better this would sound like some kind of shovel talk, but that cannot possibly be her intent.

"I don't want to like, hijack your soapbox or anything here," Kent says, maybe a little more rudely than he means, "but I think you've got the wrong idea about that. He sticks up for himself better than most people I've met. He's--" Kent laughs, honestly a little joyful. "He's one of the best people I know."

Sophie turns around and stares at him for a while again, that unflinching searching look that's starting to really creep Kent out.

"Huh," she finally grunts. He thinks she's going to say something else, but the back door swings open and Catherine bustles into the house with a big white package from the butcher, and the tension breaks. She and Sophie are off, gossiping about Mr. Redbury down the street.

Kent's honestly relieved.

. . .

"Your hand," Kent wails, only about 90% overdramatic after they finish hugging when Jeff walks in the door. He takes Jeff's cast in his hand and rubs his fingers over it mournfully. He turns his face up so he can pout at Jeff as big as he can. "Your beautiful, perfect hand."

Jeff laughs a little weirdly. "It's just a metacarpal, Parser. It'll heal fine in time for next season."

"This is what you get for fighting," Sophie chastises, pushing in through the back door. She's got something on a black tray cradled in the crook of her arm. "If you don't drop your gloves, you can't break your hand."

Jeff sighs. "It's not my fault. I really needed to punch him."

Kent frowns a little and looks up at Jeff, who's turned faintly red and refuses to meet Kent's eyes and that's. Huh.

"You're dumb," Sophie says easily.

"Zimms hooked Weasel, you saw it," Kent tells Sophie. He's still got Jeff's hand clutched to his chest. "He had to defend our rookie's honor."

"Yeah." Jeff clears his throat. "Had to. He deserved it."

Sophie and Jeff exchange a wordless conversation over Kent's head with just their eyes and Kent's starting to feel a little left out. He's suddenly hyper aware of the fact that he's mother-henning Jeff and he steps back, lets his casted hand fall. He thinks Jeff maybe looks a little surprised that he's gone, but the look doesn't last long enough for Kent to examine it.

"Anyway, hey, your mom put me up in your old room so I should go up and move my stuff--"

"Nah, you're settled." Jeff interrupts. "I'll just sleep in Angie's. It's not like she'll need it any time soon."

He races up the kitchen stairs and Kent, startled, looks to Sophie for explanation.

"Five kids," she says, cracking the thin plastic lid of the tray open and off. "Five kids in fucking LA. She doesn't exactly get a lot of free time to visit."  

Sophie lifts a delicate coconut cake from the tray and transfers it to a cake plate sitting on the counter next to the fridge. There's a doily on it already and everything. The potatoes in the slow cooker make the entire room smell like hot, buttery carbs, and Kent is suddenly fiercely glad the season is over. He's going to eat so many fucking potatoes. And cake. He's gonna eat the whole world.  

When Jeff comes back downstairs, Kent's sitting at the kitchen table with his chin in his hands, watching Sophie move around the kitchen.

"Is this what you guys do?" Kent asks him. "Just cook all day?" It's what happened the last time he was up here for Catherine's birthday party, too. There was a constant stream of food flowing from the kitchen to the back yard for hours. It's… kind of crazy, really.

Jeff looks around and shrugs as he moves to the fridge. "I dunno, yeah? It's kind of always like this. When dad's home he grills a lot, too. Angie and Caitlin are both really good bakers. We mostly just buy stuff from Westmartin's on the corner when they're not here."

The door to the refrigerator creaks when Jeff opens it. "Ma, when are you gonna let me buy you a new one of these?" he yells, and swings the door open and closed a few times and it groans in protest. "It's gonna fuckin' fall off the hinges soon!"

"Your father's going to get the old one from Connor when they move into the new house," Catherine yells down the stairs. "Swear to God, Jeffrey, leave it alone!"

It sounds like an old fight; Kent has no idea who Connor is, but Jeff seems to; he rolls eyes but he's smiling. Kent is hit by this overwhelming wave of fond contentment. He kind of wants to stay here forever, in this weird domestic chaos of the Troy home.

Jeff takes a beer out of the fridge and tilts the bottle to Kent in silent question. Not a _do you want one_ but a _do mind if I._

"Yeah, buddy." Kent smiles at him, lazy and content. "You earned it."

Jeff grins at him and goes to sit next to Kent's right hand. He props his head up on his good hand and watches Kent, smiling. Kent wants to be wigged out by it, but he just feels happy. Instead of doing something rash and stupid like running away all the way back to Vegas, he reaches out and scrtiches his fingers into Jeff's beard. "You ready to get rid of this?"

"I guess," Jeff sighs. His tone is heavy but his eyes kind of sparkle when he looks down at Kent, and Kent's breath catches a little in his throat.

"C'mon," Kent says, standing. "You got your clippers? I'll do it for you. Shave and a beer, you deserve to be pampered."

"Hot damn," Jeff says, suddenly gleeful. "It's not even my birthday."

. . .

After dinner, Sophie challenges them to a game of street hockey in the driveway. Kent is uncomfortably full, but Jeff drags him to his feet and insists. They team up against him and Kent remains cocky for about .5 seconds. It doesn't matter, though. They absolutely destroy him.

"Jesus christ," he says after, panting and stunned. Sophie's amazingly good; he's seen draft picks with less developed stickhandling than she has. "Why the fuck aren't you in the NWHL?"

Sophie slides off of Jeff's back; she'd hopped up there for her celly and Jeff carted her around the end of their driveway. The look she gives him is deeply skeptical. "I like money," she says.

Jeff snorts. "You're a PhD student in renaissance literature."

Sophie screws up her face in disdain, but sighs and lets her shoulders drop. "Touché, little brother. Touché."

. . .

The next day, they go for a run after breakfast. It's nice; they go a few miles, just intense enough that Kent breaks a sweat but he's not out of breath when they wind down to a walk.

"Hey, can I ask you a personal question?" Jeff asks when they're about four blocks away from the house.

Kent makes a series of croaky grumbling noises.

"You don't have to say yes," Jeff says, laughing. "I won't hate you or anything."

Kent slaps his hands together restlessly. "No. Fuck it. Let's do it. It's honesty week. Let's go. Do your best. Hit me with those sweet personal questions, bro."

Jeff rubs a hand over his freshly-shaven chin. "What's the deal with your dad?"

It kind of hits Kent out of nowhere. Of all the things he was maybe expecting Jeff to ask about--Zimms, maybe, that was a hot topic Kent was waiting for--this definitely wasn't it.

"Honestly?" Kent shrugs and kicks a loose rock into the gutter. "I don't really know. He was around for a few years when I was younger; I remember him a little." His mom used to say he got all of his best parts from his dad--his name, his face, hockey. _Got his worst parts too,_ she'd say sometimes, dark-eyed. "Dead, maybe? Or just gone. I never really. Looking for him seemed like a waste of time. And whenever I brought it up with my mom she just… got so angry. It wasn't worth it."

Jeff turns to look at him now, clearly boggled. "But. You're an adult now. You've got--" He waves his hands wildly. "A _shit_ ton of money. You could probably find Jesus if you wanted!"

Kent shrugs again. "It just wasn't important. I--I figured. If he was a good dad and he wanted me, he would have been here."

Jeff falls silent, then sniffs suspiciously.

"Are you crying?" Kent asks, dubious.

"Shut up," Jeff says, voice wet. "It's my fault. I knew when I asked it was probably going to make me sad."

"Aww, Jeffrey." Kent shuffles sideways and bumps him a little. "It's sweet. You can carry my daddy issues for me."

"EUGH," Jeff says loudly, and jostles Kent right back. "Nevermind, I take it back, it's weird now. You made it weird."

They walk about half a block in comfortable, companionable silence before Jeff reaches out and throws his arm around Kent's shoulders. It's a little too warm out to be sharing body heat this closely, but at the same time, it's nice. Kent lets himself fall in tandem step and curl into Jeff's side, just a little.

About a block away from the house, a tubby marbled-brownie of a cat meows up at them from behind a parked car and Kent's whole body seizes up with joy.

"A gift from the gods!" he cries, and drops immediately to his knees to dole out pets. The cat hustles over without a second thought and lets Kent scratch his fingers over her small black head. "Hi, baby."

"Oh my god," Jeff says, but his tone is warm and fond. "You're ridiculous."

Kent looks up, offended. "How _dare_ you," he hisses. "Look at this angel. She deserves to be worshipped."

Jeff's grinning, though, and he stands there with his hand in his pocket, smiling down at Kent.

"Mm, I want a cat." Kent's new friend rolls over onto her back and lets Kent scritch under her chin. "I've been thinking about it a lot, actually. But I'm worried about being away so much, and like, what if I forget to feed it or accidentally smother it with all of my manic, obsessive love?"

Jeff rocks back on his heels and thinks about it. "I dunno, it could be good for you? Having something to watch out for, I mean. Something to focus on when you feel sad. And it's not like you're too poor to afford a pet sitter three days a week for, like, eight months at a time."

The cat starts purring, but its attention snaps away from Kent and she rolls to her feet. There's a sparrow hopping around on the lawn across the street and she stalks away with nary a second thought for Kent. He heaves himself up to his feet and sighs.

"I don't want to get an animal just because I'm sad or whatever," he says, and Jeff hums his acknowledgement.

"Yeah, that's a good point." They start walking again, and Jeff jostles him a little. "I'm just saying though, don't give yourself excuses not to do something that might make you happy."

. . .

"I cannot believe how much I miss naps," Jeff says when they get back inside. "This happens every summer and every summer I feel like an idiot."

Kent laughs, and lets Jeff jostle him up the stairs. "You're not an idiot, don't talk about my best friend like that. Let's take a nap," he says, and Jeff grins at him, sly.

"That's so weird, I was just hoping you'd say that."

It doesn't seem like either of them thinks about it; Jeff follows Kent up the stairs and they converge in Kent's--Jeff's--bedroom to lie down together.

"Help me solve this sudoku," Kent says, kicking his shoes off.

"I dunno," Jeff says. He's already flopped down into the bed on his side. "You know I'm not great with math."

"Nah, man, it's not math." Kent kind of elbows Jeff around on the bed where he wants him and leans back against his shoulder so Jeff can look at his phone too. "It's more like a matching game, kinda? You gotta make sure there are no duplicates in the rows or the columns or the three-by-threes, see? Like this box has a three and a one and a seven, so you know it can't have any of those numbers in it."

"Don't drop that on my face," Jeff says, mild. "Wait, so, does a six go there? 'Cause there's a six in the other two columns."

"Yeah, exactly." Kent fills in the space and kind of snuggles back down into the crook of Jeff's arm. It's weird; they didn't even talk about this. Somewhere along the line Kent supposes they just kind of got used to laying around together. Cuddling, even. It's pretty…

Actually, no. It's not overwhelming at all. It kind of makes Kent feel like he belongs.

"Five in the bottom right," Jeff says against his hair.

They lie in silence for a few minutes in the dim light from Jeff's blackout curtains, neither of them quite ready to sleep. Kent fills in a few rows of the puzzle with Jeff's quiet help.

"Hey, I haven't asked you. How are you? Since the funeral, I mean." Jeff adjusts a little and his arm comes up around Kent so he can drag his elbow away from being crushed. "What's been going on in your head?"

Kent waivers with the phone in his hand, immediately forgetting what move he was going to make. "Uh, I mean." He twists so he can glance up at Jeff, just once, briefly. "I've been sad, I guess. But it's kind of weird how not-bad I feel. I think I would be more upset if it hadn't been so sudden, like if she had been suffering for a while. And. I dunno. It's not like I lost a whole lot. She wasn't really a part of my life anymore before she died, and I don't. I didn't. Fuck."

He finds rather distantly that he's started to cry. It kind of welled up in his chest, hot and irregular. "I don't know why I'm crying? I'm fine. I mean, I feel fine. I don't."

Jeff makes a concerned noise and pulls Kent in tight against his chest with the arm looped against Kent's abdomen.

"I think maybe you might be sad because…" Jeff sighs and Kent rises and falls gently under the movement of it. "If she was alive, then there was always the possibility that she'd come around, that one day she'd wake up and call you and apologize for all the harm she did, actually make an effort to be better. You know logically it wouldn't have happened, but it was a kind of hope, right? Now you don't have that possibility anymore. It's done. There's literally no way she'll ever be the mother you wanted her to be now. It's over."

It's something Kent would have never really been able to put into words like that. Hell, he probably wouldn't have been able to figure that out on his own, but now that Jeff's said it, Kent's absolutely sure he's right. He twists to look up at Jeff, slack-jawed and more than a little surprised.

"Yeah," Kent says. He wipes a hand over his eyes but the angle he's at makes it hard to really get the wetness off of his face, so Jeff reaches up and does it for him. "Yeah that's. I didn't even think of that?"

"Sorry." Jeff wraps an arm around Kent and pulls him in tighter. "I didn't mean to bring it up if you didn't want to talk about it. We don't have to."

"No it's." Kent tilts his head and presses his face into Jeff's chest. "It's good, I think. It's really good."

"Yeah?" Jeff says, small and pleased. Kent nods against his chest.

They lie there for a while, breathing syncing up in the quiet.

"I'm really glad I'm here," Kent finally whispers, but Jeff's already asleep.

. . .

When Kent wakes up, he's way too warm. He's sweating on the back of his neck and he can't figure out why until he shifts slightly and Jeff's sleepy weight slides across his back where he's tucked around Kent. For a second Kent just lies there, staring at the wall, suddenly tense and uncomfortable, but having Jeff steadily breathing against his back is reassuring in a weird way, like he's curled up between Kent and all the things that can hurt him.

Jeff comes awake slowly, making soft little contented grumbles that Kent is way too aware of. The rhythm of breath against his neck shifts and changes, and before he knows what's happening Jeff pulls him in with the hand on Kent's belly and presses a soft, lazy kiss to his hairline.  

Kent gasps. He's suddenly harder than he's been in months and he's got--he's got to get out of this. He can't.

He trips out of bed, the cautious contentment that'd been building all but vanishing, and he throws himself into the bathroom, locking it behind him. Movement echos through the door from the bedroom, and Kent imagines Jeff rolling to his feet, looking confused, maybe a little hurt, but still warm and rumpled and--

Yeah, that's not helping.

Kent sheds his clothes as fast as his still sleep-stiff body will allow. He slaps on the water for the shower and gets under the spray before it warms and the shock of cold water makes him gasp. It's such a bad idea for so many reasons, but as the water heats, Kent takes himself in hand and wills himself relax.

It's been a long fucking time since he's been with somebody else. It's not for lack of trying; there have been people he's taken home from dark clubs who stumble home before Kent wakes up in the morning, but they're always so fucking unsatisfying. Whatever sloppy orgasms he gets from those encounters are forced and frustrating and are wrenched out of a place deep in his belly that feel like shitty knock-offs of the real thing.

For a second, he misses Jack so overwhelmingly it takes his breath away. He misses their laughing, fumbling sex. He misses the way Jack would look into his eyes while he got Kent off like he couldn't bare to miss any minute expression Kent might have made. God, the last time--the last time in Jack's weird fucking frat house, when Kent pulled a hail mary doomed to crash and burn, before he had fucked it all up--when Kent had his hands in Jack's hair and Jack's hands were on his back, solid and deft, when Kent kissed him like he could crawl in through his mouth--

He slaps at the conditioner pump and takes the weird, thick stuff Jeff uses on his hair back to his cock and groans. It's probably the scent memory, but suddenly Kent's thinking about Jeff, about that beautiful fucking deke he pulled in their last game against the Schooners that honestly took Kent's breath away it was so hot, the way Jeff's hand feels when he reaches out to grip Kent by the back of the neck and shake, how fucking good it feels to be manipulated like that, bent to where Jeff wants him.

Kent turns and throws his arm up on the tile of the shower. He has to bite into his own bicep to quiet the sound of his groan. Jeff probably kisses that same way, all possessive and domineering and Kent's not really sure when that started doing something for him but he is suddenly absolutely sure that it's a thing now. He'd probably hold Kent down to get his mouth on Kent's dick; maybe a hand in the middle of Kent's chest or his whole arm thrown over Kent's hips. Jeff's got nearly half a foot and at least a couple dozen pounds on Kent; maybe he'd lie on Kent's back and rut his dick into the slippery crack of his ass. Kent wouldn't even have to do anything; he'd just lay there hard and leaking and pressed into the mattress, out of breath, and let Jeff take anything he wanted.

Kent comes with a muffled whimper into his arm, and. Well. That was quick.

This might be a problem.

. . .

Sophie and Catherine have a book club meeting the next night, so they don't make an obscene amount of food. Kent convinces himself to be grateful for everything they've done already instead of dramatically sad about the rack of lamb that's been sitting in the fridge, and demands Jeff take him out for dinner instead.

It's unseasonably warm for June in Long Island, so Jeff and Kent walk down the street in comfortable silence to get wings from a place Jeff claims he's been going to since he was eight, and they sit out in the backyard with their food and dry sodas. It rained that morning, so Jeff pulls the one dry reclining chair out from under their patio umbrella and makes Kent sit with him.

Kent… doesn't put up much of a fuss.

"Holy shit," Kent says when he digs in. "How much money do you think we have to give them to move to Vegas?"

"Paolo's got six siblings, four kids, and thirteen grandkids in New York," Jeff says. "So. You know. Probably a lot. Here. Swap you a lemon pepper for a garlic."

They swap wings and eat leisurely. Jeff tells him about stuff the trainers harped on him after the game; Kent talks about the draft picks he's going to fight upper management for next year. Kent feels good. Content.

It's weird, probably, that this is the best he's felt in a while, so soon after burying his mother.

"Thanks for this," Kent says, and sweeps an arm out the yard. "You know. All of this. You're great. You don't have to do this, but. It's nice."

"It's all good," Jeff says, all lopsided grin. "It's my job to take care of you."

Kent snorts. "That probably explains why I feel like you've been taking care of me since the day I was drafted."

Jeff loops an arm around Kent's middle and pulls him down so Kent's got his head tucked up under Jeff's chin. It's been a long time since Kent felt so warm and safe and protected, which is just about the gayest thought Kent's ever had, and he totally jacked off to the idea of Jeff holding him down less than 48 hours ago.

"I like it," Jeff says, instead of the speech Kent expects. Jeff's kind of a lofty fucker when the mood strikes him, potentially even verbose. He likes his sweeping pep-talks. This kind of throws Kent for a loop.

Kent rubs his face against Jeff's collarbone and feels his hair drag against Jeff's chin. He doesn't ask _why_ like he wants to; Pru's been very adamant about teaching Kent to trust the fact that people want him around. It's a new development in Kent's life. It's weird, but he can tentatively say he likes it.

"Thank you," he says instead, feet first into radical acceptance. "You're really good at it."

Jeff makes a little huffing noise and smiles down at him, wide and content. In the ruby glow of the sunset, he looks radiant. His hair's this deceptive brown that glows red when the light hits it just right, and Kent wants to put his hands in it. It's probably warm from the sun.

He's not quite sure when it happened, but Jeff's started to feel like home. Kent's so fucking content; it just radiates through him. He wants to close his eyes and go to sleep here, half lying on Jeff. He kind of maybe wants to lean up and kiss him.

Kent peeks up at Jeff, intending to be quick and sneaky about it, but Jeff's looking down at him all lazy-eyed and soft and Kent's whole body radiates with _fuck it._ He's like… 97% sure he's not reading this wrong, and god help him if he is.

Stretching just a little, Kent reaches up and wraps a hand around the back of Jeff's neck. There's a moment where Jeff's gaze goes dark and sure and Kent thinks _yes, yes yes,_ and Jeff meets him halfway.

In a weird way, it's the most hesitant kiss Kent has ever shared with someone. He feels incredibly awkward, kind of like he's a teenager again, with his lips pressed against Jeff's. It's unmoving for a minute, just blanket pressure, then Jeff shifts and pulls Kent's weight solidly against his chest, and electricity sparks up Kent's spine. Jeff opens his mouth a little, kind of nuzzles into Kent, and suddenly it's no longer first-kiss-appropriate. Kent makes a strangled sort of moan when Jeff licks into his mouth, and he can feel Jeff's pleased little rumble all the way to his toes.

They make out like they're fucking teenagers again, until Kent is out of breath and mostly in Jeff's lap before they have to catch their breath. Kent leans against Jeff's chest and can't help the laugh that bubbles out of him, a little hysterical, entirely happy.

Jeff slides his hand up Kent's body until he's got a handful of the hair at the base of Kent's neck and when Kent looks up, Jeff looks so joyful it radiates off of him. It looks amazing on him.

Next to them, Kent's phone chirps.

"That's probably your mom," Kent says, but doesn't move. He doesn't want to do anything every again except kiss Jeff.

"Why's my mom texting you?" Jeff asks, mock-alarm. "Are you two sneaking around behind my back?"

Kent chuckles, then sighs heavily. He leans over the side of the chair to get his phone. "Yeah. She's my mom now, Jeffrey. I've stolen her for the..."

 _Sorry,_ the text notification says.

Just the one word.

No contact name.

Kent deleted Jack's number about six months ago. It was a good decision; kept him from getting real morose when he was still drinking and trying to reach out in the middle of the night for a connection that had long since died. Gave him a little closure, Pru says. As much closure as he could get. But Kent's world revolved around Jack for a while, so.

He knows the number by heart.

"Kent?" Jeff sounds concerned, and his hand drops to rub absently at the small of Kent's back. "What is it?"

Suddenly Kent can't fucking stand it. He can't stand how close Jeff is to him, he can't stand that he's sharing a patio chair and making out with his D-man in fucking Long Island, can't stand that his mom's dead, can't stand that he didn't win the Cup.

"I uh, I need to go," he says, scrambling up out of the chair. He imagines Jeff probably looks startled or hurt, but Kent can't meet his eyes. He throws his to-go container and empty bottle in the trashcan by the fence.

Jeff's up like a shot behind him. "What's going on? Are you--"

"I'm fine," Kent snaps. "I just need to take a walk, okay? Alone. I don't--I'll be back in a while, okay."

"Okay, just," Jeff sounds despondent. "You--yeah, you've got your phone. Call if you need me."

Kent doesn't respond, just slips out of the gate and lets it clang behind him.

 _Jack,_ Kent thinks to himself as he takes off down the driveway. _Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack._ It's fucking resplendent and terrible all at the same time. He presses his phone to his heart and realizes he's crying only when tears hit the back of his hand. Kent doesn't feel sad, not really, so he must be doing that emotional cocktail kind of crying that he sometimes does when everything's overwhelming. He feels... scared. And happy, under it. And absolutely furious under that. He takes in a deep, burning breath.

"Fuck!" He's hit the corner of the street, and he bends over to touch his toes, restless and panicky. When he unfolds himself, there's a guy washing his car in the driveway across from Kent who gives him a _yeah, buddy, I've been there_ look before disappearing around the other side of his SUV.

"Fuck," Kent says again, quieter, shaking.


	3. Chapter 3

The next text comes about twenty minutes after the first, when Kent's sitting on the curb almost a mile from Jeff's house. He's been wandering aimlessly for half an hour. The sun's mostly gone down now, and the dull red glow is slipping down below the horizon.

_Can I call you?_

Kent drops his phone onto the concrete and slumps over his knees. He did this a couple years ago, too: sitting in the fucking gutter being sad about Jack Zimmerman. That should be the title for his autobiography. _Kent Parson: Sitting in Gutters Because of Jack Zimmerman._ Maybe an editor would make him change it. Make it punchier. _Kent Parson: Guttered._

That has a nice ring to it. Kent laughs into his jeans.

 _I guess,_ he texts back, and waits.

. . .

"Bitty said I shouldn't call you," Jack says instantly which really drives home how much he doesn't know how to make Kent comfortable.

"Yeah, your boyfriend's pretty smart," Kent says dryly.

"He's--" Jack swallows. "He's my fiance now, actually."

Kent lets the hand that's holding the phone drop down to his side. He breathes in and out heavily and looks to the sky before he puts it back up to his ear.

"Wow, congratulations, that's so great," he says, and it comes out dead.

"You should come to the engagement party," Jack says dryly, and Kent makes a strangled sort of noise, completely involuntarily.

"You're kidding, right?"

Jack chuckles, and the memory of that laugh shoots through Kent like a livewire. "Yeah, Kenny. I'm kidding. I mean, you could, if you want. But."

He fucking hates the sound of it on Jack's lips. Kenny. It mocks at Kent, teasing and sharp. Jesus. He doesn't have the right to call Kent that anymore, but Kent can't get it out of his mouth to tell him off. He clears his throat.

"I think Eric would probably bake me a pie full of razorblades if I ever showed up to one of your parties again, so hard pass. Anyway, uh. Why…?" Kent asks. It hurts to talk. Jesus, he kind of wishes Jeff were here. He'd tell Kent he's being dramatic and to get over himself. Why the hell did Kent leave?

Jack sounds like he's moving around his house; Kent's pretty sure he can hear him open and close his refrigerator restlessly.

 _Good,_ he thinks, bitter. _Wouldn't want this to be easy for you._

"I, uh. Heard about your mom. I know you two had a hard relationship but. She was always kind to me, and I know you loved her. I'm so sorry."

Kent has a visceral, flashing daydream of hurling his phone into traffic, of jumping up and down on the pieces of it, of driving his BMW through Jack Zimmerman's beautiful fucking Boston condo. Jack doesn't know shit. Or he knows--he knows exactly how terrible Silvie was. He knows his platitudes don't mean anything. He knows Kent's probably losing it.

He was never good at speaking Kent's language. It wasn't his fault, though. Kent was never really good at Jack's either.

 _You're being self-centered,_ Pru's voice says in his head, and he takes one long, deep breath. Fine. He can do this. Adult choices.

"Thanks," he says, and it comes out a little harsher than he wants, so he clears his throat and tries to settle. "Thanks," he says again, and this one isn't perfect either, but it's a little nicer.

There's silence for a while. It makes Kent uncomfortable, like he should be the one to say something. But the ball is firmly in Jack's court here and he has to remember that. He doesn't need to go opening his mouth and getting himself in trouble.

"Listen, Kenny--" Jack starts, but Kent can't fucking stand it anymore. It's so _fond_ when Jack says it and every time it breaks his heart. It's barely two god damn syllables and it absolutely unmans him.

"Stop," Kent says. It comes out a lot more desperate than Kent wanted. "Stop, stop, stop. Stop. Stop _calling_ me that."

Jack sucks air in through his teeth, a habit Kent's surprised to find he's forgotten about, then breathes out slowly. " _Criss._ Désolé. Sorry. You're right. I just, I've been talking about you a lot lately with my therapist and he said I've been doing good, and we're both a lot older now, so..." He sounds so hopeful it makes Kent a little sick.

"Christ, is _everybody_ in fucking therapy?" Kent asks, bitter.

"I don't know," Jack says. "They should be. You know the Penguins require all of their players to--"

"I don't want to hear about the fucking Pens," Kent snaps. Jack stutters to a stop, and Kent puts a hand over his face, takes one long, calming breath. This is a mess.

"Why did you call me, Jack?"

Jack sighs. "I wanted to say sorry about your mother, truly, and--" _If you say anything about the Cup,_ Kent thinks fiercely, _I'm going to fly to Providence and punch you._ "I was hoping maybe we'd be in a place where we could talk again, maybe. I respect you, Kent. I want to be--if not okay, then at least friendly."

"Fine," Kent says. "I forgave you a long time ago, anyway. Anything else?"

There's a beat of silence.

"Forgave _me?_ " Jack asks, incredulous. "Kent, you were--you were obsessed with me!"

"Obsessed with you? _Obsessed_ with you?" He's approaching hysterics at an unquestionable rate. "You're the one who kept fucking _texting_ me when you were in college! ' _Kenny,_ I miss hiding from parties with you, _Kenny,_ it's so weird without you at my wing!' You fucking… you didn't get to string me along like that! You don't get to decide when it's okay to have people in your life who love you!"

"Because you were so damn good at making me want you when I didn't need you!" Jack yells right back at him.

Kent is so fucking tired of crying. It's his default reaction to everything now: sadness, grief, frustration, anger, fury, ferocity. It chokes him up. He has nothing left to say.

"I swear this isn't why I called," Jack says. He's breathing just as hard as Kent, but through it he sounds unbearably sad. "I wanted--"

"You should have listened to your fucking fiance," Kent snarls, and ends the call.

It doesn't ring again.

What a piece of shit. Kent didn't fucking _do_ anything. Jack was the one who cut him off. Kent sat outside his hospital room for _days_ and Jack just… let him do it. Bob kept saying _soon,_ kept saying _he's not ready yet,_ kept saying _don't give up hope, son._

The best day of Kent's life, spent sitting in a waiting room for something that would never come.

He almost unlocks his phone, almost dials Jack back, almost says _I was so in love with you I would have let you devour me,_ almost, almost, almost.

Instead, he swallows and heaves himself to his feet.

. . .

Jeff's left the yard by the time Kent's gets back. His take-away container has been thrown away and the floodlights from the driveway illuminate the back yard, stark and uncanny. Kent lingers at the back door and takes a deep breath. He feels on the boundary of something, all coiled and tense and ready for change.

"Hey," Jeff says, when Kent's come in through the kitchen. He's sitting on the couch in the living room, watching what's probably a week-long X-Files marathon. There are no lights on, but Jeff is illuminated in the vibrant blue glow from the TV.

Kent doesn't think, he just crosses the room. He reaches out, puts a hand on Jeff's shoulder for balance, puts his knees on either side of Jeff's legs, and settles into his lap.

"Uh, hey," Jeff says again.

Kent kisses him.

"Shh," Kent whispers against his skin, and presses his entire body as close as he can against Jeff. It feels so good and so warm, and when Jeff reaches up and slides his hand across the back of Kent's neck, Kent whimpers. He kisses Jeff greedily, gasping a little into his mouth when he needs to breathe but can't bring himself to pull away.

"Who texted you?" Jeff asks in the middle of one of those half-breaks, and Kent is so pleased to hear Jeff's as out of breath as he is, but he shakes his head, presses himself up against Jeff's chest to kiss along his jaw, angles his hips down so his dick drags over Jeff's. He shivers, and Jeff makes a choked noise.

"Jack. Doesn't matter."

"Wait--what?" Jeff says, but Kent shakes his head. He wants to put his mouth on every plane of Jeff's body. He wants to chase the salt of him.

"I don't want to talk about it," Kent whispers, desperate, and nips at the skin of Jeff's throat. He worms his hands under the hem of Jeff's shirt, fingers splayed and wandering.

"Hey," Jeff says, and pulls back a little. That new gap between them suddenly feels like a gulf, and Kent shakes when he reaches out, tries to pull him back in. "I don't think that's a great idea, Kent. I really think we should talk about it."

Everything in Kent suddenly hurts. He's too hot and too cold all at the same time and his arms shake when Jeff wraps his hands around Kent's wrists to push him gently away. Jeff doesn't… Jeff doesn't want…

Kent pulls his hands out of Jeff's grasp and climbs off the sofa.

"What the fuck's wrong with you, man? You've been chasing after me for years and now that you've finally get the opportunity to get your dick wet with the one person who pays any attention to you, you get all precious and deficient on me? Jesus, I had no idea you were actually that simple."

Jeff's head rocks back like Kent's actually slapped him. He looks stunned, pale and wide-eyed.

 _Good,_ Kent thinks, wild and heartbroken but determined. Maybe this will finally be the thing that convinces Jeff he's better off without Kent's mess. They can play together after this, they're both professional, but maybe Jeff will stop coming around, stop holding Kent when he feels like he's going to come apart.

It's for his own good.

Jeff clambers off the sofa and stares at Kent, wide eyed and slack-jawed. "I-- call your fucking therapist." He reaches out a shaking hand like he might touch Kent, but in the end he tips his palm up like he's trying to push him away instead. In the end he winds up backing away from Kent like he's some kind of feral animal that Jeff shouldn't take his eyes off.

In the end, he doesn't say anything when he leaves, and he doesn't slam the door behind him.

. . .

Kent immediately goes upstairs packs his things in a nondescript daze. It's almost funny: for somebody who spends as much time as Kent does experiencing every little emotion to an uncomfortable degree, it's kind of a relief to feel absolutely nothing.

It hits him when he's in the air. He turned off his phone in the car to the airport after sending Catherine a very nice thank-you text for opening her home up to him, and he's staring down at the dark screen after boarding when it just seizes up in him.

 _You make everyone who loves you abandon you,_ he thinks, and then it's like opening the floodgates. He curls into the side of his seat and puts his pillow over his face and lets himself cry. It's embarrassing to do it in public; Kent can hear the stewardess linger every so often next to his seat, probably to offer help or something, but she always changes her mind and leaves him be.

It hurts so fucking much. It hurts like somebody's reached down his throat and grabbed his stomach in a tight, iron fist. It hurts in a way that he never expects it to. It hurts in his bones, all molten and corrosive.

Pru's advice often leans to _call somebody_ when he's feeling like this, but who the hell would he call? Jeff's a solid no. And his boys are great, and most of them know a little about Kent's… deal, but he can't just call up his new rookie in gasping hysterics for comfort. Jack? Kent would rather cut off his own foot. His mom?

Kent's sobbing hitches into a painful laugh and he has to gasp into his pillow to push the hurt of that away.

Pru? Nah. He doesn't deserve Pru. Pru will fix him, and Kent doesn't deserve to be fixed.

It doesn't matter, really. He's done this before. He can do it again.

Or.

Maybe he doesn't have to.

Kent is… weird, probably. Definitely weird. He's always kind of found the idea of suicide vaguely reassuring. Like if anything got too bad he could just close the book and move on. Finito. Final say. He gets to be the arbiter of his own destiny. He's always had a plan for it, in the deep recesses of his mind, vague and constantly shifting, but ever since Jeff told him about his sister, ever since Kent spent an hour googling exit bags, the _how_ has solidified.

God, Jeff. He'd be fucking destroyed. The well inside of Kent seems to dry up at that, and his crying finally shakes to a halt. Kent was unspeakably awful to him, but he's not an idiot. He knows Jeff cares about him. If Kent died it would absolutely destroy him.

Maybe, though. Maybe it'd be worth it. It'd be the last thing time he ever hurt someone he loved, and that's worth something, right? Without him around Jeff would be able to move on. Jeff's a strong guy, he'd be able to bounce back. Maybe not immediately, but he'd be fine. He's got family to care for him through it. The team would mourn Kent together.

The sky around the plane is dark and still. There are cheerful little lights twinkling far below them, but Kent feels discordant and hollow.

Yeah. Kent wipes a hand over his face and brushes the tears off. Yeah, he wants to die.

It's a relief.

. . .

It's ebbed by the time he's landed, which he'll probably be thankful for later. Honestly by the time he gets off the plane he's too drained and exhausted to do anything but order an Uber back to his apartment. It's kind of strange, but Kent's pretty sure crippling, depressive apathy has saved his life more than once.

He turns his phone on when he's back in his apartment and drops his bags by the door.

 _I'm sorry,_ he texts Jeff. _I'm so fucking sorry._ Then: _Back in Vegas. Sorry._

He hits send right before his phone picks up service and starts downloading all of the messages he's missed.

Jeff's texted him about a thousand times. They all come streaming into his phone-- _ping! ping! ping!_ \--in a discordant wave, the next one starting before the alert for the last finishes. Kent doesn't read any of them. He turns his alerts off, plugs his phone into the outlet on his kitchen counter, and lies down on the section of the couch that faces the windows that look out over the Strip.

He doesn't know when he slips from exhausted numbness into sleep, but it does come.

Sleep always comes.

. . .

Surprise isn't exactly a word Kent would use to explain how he feels when Jeff shows up at his door about eight hours later. Kent's slept fitfully, but he hasn't made himself get up and take his clothes off and get in bed because he doesn't deserve it yet.

Jeff looks just as exhausted as Kent feels, and something malicious claws its way through his gut. _You did that to him,_ he thinks.

He lets Jeff in and goes back to the couch. He anxiously picks up the blanket he'd been curled under under the pretense of straightening the room, but he just clutches it to his chest and watches Jeff.

"Are you okay?" Jeff asks, running his gaze up and down Kent's body critically. "You didn't hurt yourself, did you?"

Kent shakes his head weakly.

"Okay." Jeff takes a huge, deep breath. "Good."

"I'm sorry I scared you," Kent says. He feels small, like when he would take his report card to his mom and she would ask him why he didn't get As. It's a useless feeling, Kent knows, but it's there all the same.

"I was really worried about you," Jeff says, barely louder than a whisper. Kent doesn't have a response for that, so he just looks somewhere over Jeff's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Kent finally says again, and when it comes out it's all weak and shaky. Something wells up in his chest. "I'm so sorry."

And, yep, there he goes. He's crying. It's such a stupid thing. He's so sick of crying at every fucking little thing, but he can't stop it, he's absolutely ricocheting. Jeff just wanted to make sure he wasn't dead, and now he's going to leave and Kent's going to have to keep on going without him and--

"Please don't leave me," he chokes out. "I can't fucking do that again, I can't handle being alone again, Jeff, I'm so fucking sorry, please don't hate--"

"No," Jeff says, and Kent stops talking with a gasp. His blood runs cold and his head swims. "I'm not doing this manipulative shit with you. _You_ left New York. _You_ ran away from me. Actually, no. I'm not letting you do this to _me._ I care about you so much," Jeff says. His arms are folded over his chest and he looks painfully defensive, but something in his tone cracks. He sounds like he's giving up when he starts up again. "You know what, no, fuck it. I love you. Which is why I'm not playing this game with you."

Kent sways backwards. Jeff… loves him?

Jeff loves him.

Well. Not anymore, probably.

"Listen, I've been… talking. To your therapist. Not about you but… about you. Before you get into a huff to call her and yell about confidentiality or whatever, I just mean. She's been explaining your thing to me. About how to be in love with someone who has your disorder, so." He takes a deep breath.

Kent still can't get over it. _How to be in love with you,_ Jeff had all but said. It's so casual, just slips out of him like it isn't the biggest thing that he's ever told Kent, like it's not this frightening new thing. Like he's known about it for a while.

"Firsts things first. I'm not running away from you. What you said earlier hurt. It hurt a lot, but begging me to stay with you isn't going to erase the fact that it happened."

Nausea breaks over Kent like a wave. He didn't even realize he was doing it, not really. It's… fuck. It's manipulative and it makes Kent's skin crawl. He's a piece of shit. He drops backwards onto the couch. Kent puts his hands on his face and curls in on himself.

"I was doing so good," he says, muffled. "Fuck, I'm so sorry. I don't even know what's going on anymore but I was doing so fucking good like three months ago, Jeff, I don't know what to do--"

Jeff touches him lightly on the wrist and when Kent looks up he's kneeling in front of the couch, mouth in a determined line but eyes soft.

"I think I get that your intention was to protect me, in a really twisted way. And I get what you just said is true, okay. I get that your loneliness is fucking you up. But I'm not--" He circles his fingers around Kent's wrist and pulls his hand away from his face until Kent has nothing to hide behind anymore. "I'm not 17, Kent. I'm not doing that insane, fevered romance novel thing. I'm not going to let you hurt me and then pull me back in because you beg for it. You have to tell me what's going on. Don't make me fight for it. I'm telling you, you don't have to do that."

Kent touches Jeff's face, just a little, with the fingers of his shackled hand. "God, Jeff, I'm so sorry. I--" He swallows. He's talked about this with Pru a lot, about taking responsibility and apologizing for his shitty behavior in a healthy way, without excuses and pandering. It seemed so impossible on the phone yesterday with Jack, but now...

"I'm sorry I hurt you. That was a terrible thing for me to say to you, I mean, you know this, but I promise I didn't mean it. I don't believe any of that. I think you're kind of amazing. You're so clever, in ways I never am, you're so smart with people. If I ever heard somebody talking like that about you I'd beat them up." He laughs a little weakly, more snot and tears than actual air. "You should definitely get your sister to beat me up."

Jeff touches his cheeks, wipes away Kent's tears. He looks fonder than he has any right to after Kent's hurt him so spectacularly.

"Thank you for your apology," Jeff says, simple. The whole conversation has thrown Kent for a pretty terrifying loop but at the same time, he feels… really good. In a weird way, under the shame and self-disgust and avalanche of sadness, it might be the best thing that's ever happened to him.

For the first time, Kent lets himself wonder what it could have been like with Jack. If he had been here, in this place with Jack instead of Jeff. If Kent had Pru back then, if he understood that his brain was just as messed up as Jack's. If they had both gotten help, if they could have managed it together.

It doesn't matter, though. He takes a deep breath. That was nearly a decade ago, and he's not here with Jack. He's here with Jeff, and it's totally incomparable. He doesn't love Jack anymore, not really, not in the way he used to.

Absently, Jeff's thumb rubs over the vein in his wrist and Kent shivers.

"Are we okay?" Kent still feels deeply shameful. "I know I don't deserve it at all. You should probably just go back to your house in the suburbs and never talk to me again, honestly."

"Stop," Jeff says, and Kent stops. "We're done with the self-deprecating shit for right now. We're okay, Kent."

"Really?" Kent asks, way too hopeful.

"Really. But you can bet as soon as she's got an open appointment I'm marching your ass into Pru's office and we're going to have a nice long sit down. Together."

Kent wrinkles his brow. "Together? Like… like couple's therapy?"

Jeff blinks, startled, like that wasn't at all what he suggesting, but. "Yeah, I." He runs a hand through his hair and looks away, cheeks red. Kent doesn't think he's ever actually seen Jeff blush before, and it kind of takes his breath away.

Except he has. He totally has. Jeff flushed when Kent was needling him about punching Jack, and. Holy shit.

He's pretty sure that Jeff Troy defended his honor. God. He's so in love with him.

"I guess that's right," Jeff says.

Together. Jeff wants to do it together.

"You love me," Kent says, wondrously, and Jeff sighs.

"Sorry, I didn't--that's not productive, that doesn't change anything about--"

Kent shakes Jeff's grip off of his wrist and reaches out to turn his chin back so they're facing. He's grinning, and Jeff looks unsure. "You love me," Kent says again, whisper-soft.

"Sorry," Jeff says again, downcast.

Kent shakes his head. "You're the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me, Jeffrey Troy, and I'm not quite sure what I did to make you love me, but holy shit." He laughs. Kent feels about a million miles tall and disconnected from the earth. He feels high and drunk and utterly blissful. "You love me."

"You're crying," Jeff says, sounding more surprised than he has any purpose sounding having known Kent as long as he has.

Kent's vision is blurred and his cheeks are wet and he laughs. "Yeah, this is really intense for me. But, I. I love it. I love you. Holy shit, that sounds so weird. I love you."

When Jeff smiles, it spreads across his face like a sunrise and Kent gets impossibly warm all the way down to his toes. Jeff heaves himself to his feet and pulls Kent up with him. He wraps his arms around Kent until they're touching from head to toe.

When Kent tilts his head up, Jeff kisses him, just once. Soft and promising.

"I want to make you proud of me," Kent whispers into Jeff's shoulder.

"Are you kidding?" Jeff sounds incredulous. "I'm already proud of you. Crazy proud. You've come so far since I met you. Fuck, Kent. One bad day--and nobody on the face of the planet is going to blame you for having a bad day after everything that's just happened--isn't going to change that. You don't have to make me proud. Make yourself proud."

Kent rubs his snotty nose against Jeff's shirt. Maybe he's on to something there.

"This is the worst love confession ever," Kent says. "I'm crying and you're not even naked."

Jeff throws back his head and laughs. Kent can feel the vibrations in his forehead where it's pressed against Jeff's throat.

"That's fine. We can have a do-over later if you want." Jeff's voice is quiet and soft when he stops laughing, and he sounds so fond. His hand slips up Kent's back to cup his neck, and he strokes Kent's jaw with a gentle thumb. "Whatever it is, we'll figure it out, okay? We'll do it together."

. . .

"My hand still feels so fuckin' weird," Jeff says, waving his arm above his head like a lunatic. "It's like half as light as it used to be."

"Stop--" Kent laughs abortively and smacks Jeff in the chest. "Stop that. Don't draw attention to us."

"Awww," Jeff coos, and ruffles his hair before dropping a kiss to Kent's head. "Somebody's nervous."

"I'm not nervous, I just. I want to make a good impression." Kent straightens his shirt compulsively. Maybe a little nervously. "What if she doesn't like me? What if you scare her with your weird light hand? God, I should have come by myself, you big freak."

"Noooo," Jeff whines. "I'll be good. I wanna meet her."

"You're going to meet her eventually, man, what the fuck." Kent's outrageously nervous and Jeff is in no way helping the situation. Kent definitely should have left him at home.

The door to the room cracks open and Kent's heart leaps and soars.

"Here she is!" The employee--a girl Kent finds frankly way too young to be working anywhere at any time but apparently Kent's been getting _old_ lately--backs into the room. Her nametag says Shaneka, which Kent is outrageously grateful for because he hasn't been able to remember her name for the last three visits. He's been distracted.

The kitten in her arms looks so much better than the last time Kent saw her and Kent beams with pride. That's his girl. She's a fighter. She'd been abandoned on the shoulder of 95 when somebody brought her in (and holy shit Kent is one well-paid PI away from tracking that person down and kissing them straight on the mouth) all mangled and underfed and heartbreaking.

He came in for the first time a month ago, taken one good look at her, and thrown money at the shelter for her surgeries. And now. Now.

She's his.

"You know what you're gonna name this little lady yet?" Shaneka asks when she deposits the kitten in his arms. Kent barely hears her, too enraptured with the soft grey cloud in his arms. The kitten had some nasty gunk clogging up her eyes the last time Kent saw her but now she's wide-eyed and gazing up at Kent like he hung the moon, which, okay, he might be reading into it a little but sue him.

"I was thinking, like. An old lady name. Gladys? Mariel? Something like that."

"That's stupid," Jeff says, laughing. "You can't name a cat Mariel."

The kitten chirps up at Kent and settles herself in against his chest. She's purring.

"We'll see," Kent says, perfectly overjoyed.

**Author's Note:**

> [tu.](http://bazanite.tumblr.com)


End file.
